Saturday, July 19, 2008

Still life with quitter

Two rehearsals today. TWO. Burnin' Sternum's first one—which was a blast—and my first practice back with Tommy for the Poke show before August's Thunderdome. But I did not take a picture, because tonight I was going to be at either ComedyCity or CounterClockwise's roast of Total Recall.

Sigh.

I head out to ComedyCity, e-mailing Nikki on the way to see if they're going to have a show. She's sick, the DuPonts won't be there, and I change directions to head to Total Recall. I'll be late, but who cares? Except I park and realize I left my wallet on my side table, because I had it out to make KCiF guest artist travel arrangements. Now I'll be 45 minutes late.

Screw it. Time to open a bottle of wine, pop a 100-calorie bag of Jolly Time and whip out a movie with George Clooney in it. (Ocean's 13. Which, oddly, is much more fun to watch now that Clooney is no longer dating a 20-something cocktail waitress.)

ANYWAY. The universe told me to stay home, and I'm staying home.

Rehearsals were fun. The Sternums were minus Pete, which makes it 20% less fun, but it was a good couple of hours. We got together a few months ago to figure out what we were interested in doing—a continuous, single-location scene. We're still working out specifics—like whether we'll do entrances and exits, switch out characters, stuff like that. Today was just play time; we cleared the living room furniture and ran three 30-minute-ish scenes.

Ever rehearsed in the living room of a condo? If rehearsing in a library squashes a little bit of weird, the living room (for me, anyway) stomps it into the ground. AH. A topic: Does your rehearsal space matter?

When the kids studied with Annoyance folks in Chicago, Susan Messing talked about respecting the space—how the Annoyance classrooms gave you protection to do a specific kind of work, the iO stage gave you permission to do another, and the Liberty High School stage demanded yet another.

I freak out a little any time someone swears in our space at the library. I yelled something pretty gross (but plot relevant)—and then felt very uncomfortable about yelling it—when I rehearsed with Babel Fish in Nathan's back yard off Ward Parkway. I play very close to myself when I'm in my own living room, with my neighbors above and on either side (it didn't help that Michael got a letter from the HOA after one rehearsal at his place).

The only place I really completely let go is in a certified improv space—a classroom, or on the stage where we'll be performing.

Which doesn't seem like a legit reason to hold back. Even if I have to dial the volume down or watch the content, there should be other types of risks I should be able to take. I got truly annoyed at myself after one scene, where Rob had an actual emotional point of view and I duped myself into believing I'd grounded the scene and my character by not responding in a realistic way.

I shouldn't have to be in a performance space to perform. There's something new to work on.